It is not possible to provide a high level central power source with solar generators or generators consisting of fuel cells installed in a satellite. The excess power available at the beginning of the mission in comparison to that available at the end of the mission must be transformed to radiated heat. Central regulators for this would have to provide for power dissipation on the order of one kilowatt making them very heavy and, therefore, unsuitable for the mission. For project "Aerosat," the firm ETCA proposed separation of the solar generator into several generator modules. Only the number of generator modules required to satisfy the instantaneous power requirements of the satellite on-board systems are connected to the power bus while the remaining generator modules are short-circuited. Fluctuations between the discrete power increments obtained in this manner are smoothed out by a parallel regulator which centrally maintains a constant voltage on the power bus.
This concept is applied advantageously when the power transmitted to the on-board systems and the power bus potential are not very high. If however, the voltage values exceed 1,000 volts then, for one, the excess heat generated in the short-circuited generator modules must be removed and in addition, because of the solar generator's characteristics, essentially more heat must be transferred in the parallel regulator than, for example, in a series regulator. Moreover, for the concepts mentioned, there are no particulars available of how the difficulties associated with the application of high power alternating current voltage systems can be overcome since the alternating current voltage can hardly be produced centrally.
An object of the invention, therefore, is to provide a device for voltage regulation and power transmission in such incremental-type power supply units and for which the losses are minimized. It is a further object that the device provide a simple and reliable circuit.